Watching the World

‘Dust Bowl’ Returning?

◆ Many Texas farmers fear that the ‘Dust Bowl’ of the nineteen thirties is making a comeback. The Texas High Plains, covering about 35,000 square miles, is one of the richest areas in food and fiber in the U.S. But last year wheat in the region yielded only half of a good year’s produce. Adverse weather is one cause. In addition, some say that the Ogallala aquifer, a vast underground lake irrigating the plains, is drying up. H. Burleigh, director of the Texas Water Development Board, says: “The specter of global want is becoming a disturbing potential, not just a matter of cocktail hour speculation.”

Drip Irrigation

◆ “Drip irrigation” (used for some time in Israel) is now being successfully employed in the U.S. Results? Southern California avocados, lemons, grapefruit are, surprisingly, grown on 45-degree slopes; grapes are cultivated in an area where water is scarce. Water is brought to the fields via underground mains, pumped through filters and mixed with fertilizer. Then it flows through polyvinyl chloride pipes to be slowly released on crops. The method greatly reduces the amount of both water and fertilizer used.

Crime Expands

◆ Crime is expanding everywhere. Japan once boasted that its youth were crime free. Now The Daily Yomiuri says: “The nation’s police took into custody 104,307 youths aged 14-19 on criminal charges in the first 11 months of [1974], up 6,804 from one year earlier.” The Sunday Oklahoman quotes one sheriff in that part of the U.S. as saying: “Rural burglaries at homes in the daytime are tearing us up.” New York Business claims that “stealing time,” such as employees showing up late and socializing at work, costs the U.S. about $60 billion annually. Certain recent so-called “decreases” in crime were apparently artificial. The New York Post says that some city policemen have falsified reports to make it appear that crime is going down at night.

Supporting Business

◆ Efficiency and flexibility have put America’s big corporations at the center of the western way of life, says editor John Cobbs in Business Week. “In the last five years, however, something has gone badly wrong,” he writes. “Caught in an explosive inflation and wracked by two painful recessions, an increasing number of giant corporations can no longer claim either flexibility or efficiency. They have lost control of their costs, lost their access to capital, misjudged their markets, and diversified into lines of business they do not understand.” The magazine concludes: “The giant corporations have become so important to the U.S. economy that government does not dare let one go under.”

Catholics and Christ’s Coming

◆ Catholic scholar William Marrin writes in St. Anthony Messenger of a priest who asked his parish if they really believed that Christ would return. Only 36 percent answered Yes. Marrin acknowledges that there is much talk about the return of Jesus. Yet he says: “While the number of people who take this seriously is growing, there is a contrary opinion, still shared by most Catholics I think, that the whole thing has sort of a craziness about it. . . . In other words, we have a situation in which most Catholics may be willing to let the Second Coming go the way of Eve’s apple and Jonah’s whale.” Just what part of the Bible do they believe?

Who Indulged Them? Why?

◆ Midge Decter writes in the Atlantic magazine that if the younger generation is weak and self-indulging it is because it has merely been tolerated, not trained, by parents and other elders: “What the [teachers] did not tell you was that their passionate advocacy of your attitudes was the material with which they themselves were attempting to forge a powerful and well-paid position in the world. . . . No wonder they beatified you . . . Have you been, perhaps, the most indulged generation in history? Yes, but in many ways you have also been the most abandoned, by the very people who endlessly professed how much they cared.”

“Doomsday Decade”

◆ ‘Our time is no different from any other’​—at least that is what some people say. Max Lerner, the syndicated columnist, disagrees. “One thing we are certain of is that this decade is like no other the world has known, in its staggering revelations of corruption in high places, its conjunction of new and unexpected crises in energy, food and other resources, and its danger spots of possible ravaging wars,” he writes. “None of us can ignore the onrush of brutal events which makes this the Doomsday Decade and will at best send it down in history as the Survival Seventies.”

Earth Is Different

◆ What makes the earth different from other nearby planets? A recent Science report says: “Only the earth of the inner planets has a massive satellite, which may account for the planet’s relative climatic stability and, possibly, for its strong, magnetic field.” The article adds: “The Apollo astronauts reported that the earth’s blue skies and white clouds, as viewed from space, made it by far the most inviting object they could see. The growing information about other planetary bodies in the solar system tends to confirm that view.”

Will They Ever Learn?

◆ Science News recently published highlights of 1974 in the world of science. Included was this item: “What has been reported to be incontrovertible evidence for past glaciation in the mountains of North Carolina turned out to be a result of human activity.” (Italics ours)

Religious Magazines’ Woes

◆ An increasing number of religious periodicals are in serious trouble. The noted Catholic journal Commonweal switched from weekly to biweekly in December. Christianity and Crisis appealed for funds.” Southern Voices temporarily suspended publication. The Lutheran Church​—Missouri Synod’s Der Lutheraner ceased publication at the end of 1974. Christianity Applied published only three issues before folding. In pleasant contrast, Awake! opened 1974 with an average printing of 7,700,000; the figure for the February 8, 1975, issue was up one million, to 8,700,000, and it is still rising.

Churches and the Economy

◆ The economy is playing havoc with the churches. Christianity Today reports that during 1974 Denver’s Calvary Baptist Church filed for bankruptcy, Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, was placed in virtual receivership and that Rex Humbard’s Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio, barely escaped bankruptcy. The magazine adds in an editorial: “For the first time in ten years the American Bible Society sent out a strong financial appeal six weeks before year end . . . Religious Heritage of America reported changes to reduce spending so as to remain viable. Billy Graham announced plans for a cutback.”

An ‘Illicit Society’

◆ “Organized” crime gets blamed for much of the wrong done in the U.S. But The Mafia Mystique, a new book by Dwight C. Smith of New York State University, argues that big crime really flourishes because ordinary people want it: “The plain fact is that organized crime is the product of forces that threaten values, not the cause of them. As long as we countenance violence, consider personal gain to be more important than equity . . . and are willing to bend the law for ourselves in the pursuit of wealth, power and personal gratification . . . we will have a society receptive to illicit enterprise generally.”

Rats Abound

◆ Rats are a major problem in most major cities of the world. Today’s Health says there is probably a rat in the U.S. for every one or two humans; no city rat-control program has yet been successful. Why? For one thing rats multiply at a fantastic rate. Then, too, the major poisons used against them, red squill and warfarin, have lost much of their effectiveness. A rat eats only about an ounce of food each day; but it rips so many bags and boxes and leaves such a trail of droppings behind that several pounds of food may be rendered unfit for humans.

Is This Integration?

◆ Some have boasted about the success of U.S. efforts to end segregation in its schools. But has real integration been achieved? Says U.S. News & World Report: “Racial barriers, in many places almost nonexistent in the early grades, become clear and firm as youngsters reach adolescence​—and tend to stay that way through college. . . . This self-segregation is usually civil and comfortable. But for most schools it means a tendency toward separate tables in lunchrooms, separate cheering sections at athletic events, and practically no contact interracially after school hours.”

Attitude Toward the Mass

◆ About ten years ago the Catholic Church stopped conducting the Mass in Latin; now it is in the language of the people. In the same period Mass attendance has dropped. Some people see a connection. Says U.S. newspaper columnist W. F. Buckley: “As a Catholic, I have abandoned hope for the liturgy. . . The next liturgical ceremony conducted primarily for my benefit, since I have no plans to be beatified or remarried, will be my funeral; and it is a source of great consolation to me that, at my funeral, I shall be quite dead, and will not need to listen to the accepted replacement for the noble old Latin liturgy. Meanwhile, I am practicing Yoga so that, at church on Sundays I can develop the power to tune out everything I hear, while attempting . . . to commune with my Maker, and ask Him first to forgive me my own sins, and implore him, second, not to forgive the people who ruined the mass.”

Sludge as Fertilizer

◆ The price of petroleum-base fertilizer is increasing. As a result more farmers are looking for alternatives. Treated sludge is now in greater demand. Organic Gardening magazine reports that the city of Denver now uses such sludge in agriculture. “Presently,” the magazine says, “some 500 to 600 wet tons of sludge a day are applied to land. This equals approximately 90 to 100 dry tons of fertilizer a day.” Denver’s Director of Resource Recovery claims: “Someday this material will never be called waste again.”

Prison Lesbians

◆ Angela Davis was a hardened civil rights leader during the nineteen sixties. She says that one aspect of prison life jolted her. All in the prison were women; but there were ‘families’ of husbands, wives, children and relatives organized. She says: “What struck me most about this family system was the homosexuality at its core. . . . I was not prepared, however, for the shock of seeing it so thoroughly entrenched in jail life. . . . An important part of the family system was the marriages. Some of them were extremely elaborate​—with invitations, a formal ceremony, and some third person acting as the ‘minister.’”

Scientific Peer Pressure

◆ Some scientists say publicly that they believe evolution, but privately they admit that the facts do not support it. Why do they stick with such a teaching? One answer is supplied by Dr. Ed Blick of the University of Oklahoma, who is quoted in Orbit Magazine: “Many people fail to realize that there is a great deal of professional ‘pride’ among scientists and there are very few, especially in the life sciences, who are willing to risk their professional reputation by acknowledging creation . . . For example, there have been some graduate students here at OU who have told me . . . that to openly support the creationist position would jeopardize their careers.”